New Met Galleries Mean Fewer Blockbusters, Gift Shops

"Madonna and Child" (c. 1300) by Duccio di Buoninsegna. Duccio's small masterwork made headlines when the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased it in 2004 for about $45-50 million. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art via Bloomberg

May 2 (Bloomberg) -- I was immersed in Velazquez’s
“Portrait of Duke Francesco I d’Este,” now on view at New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art, when someone grabbed my arm.

An excited Keith Christiansen, head of the Met’s European
Paintings department, pulled me down the hall to a boarded-up
entrance and unlocked the door. It almost felt illicit as we
stepped inside.

Here were the expanded and renovated galleries for European
paintings. Changes are subtle yet magisterial. Walls are all
neutral grays. Mismatched hardwood, cork, carpeted and terrazzo
floors are now uniform parquet.

Some pictures were still leaning against the walls. It was
clear that the additional space has created an airier and more
natural sense of flow, revealing the interconnectedness among
movements, nationalities and painters.

The galleries have been entirely rethought in terms of
convergences and themes. Rooms are devoted to portraits from the
Netherlands. Goya, as he was in his own day, is placed at the
intersection of Spanish and French painting.

Sculpture and decorative arts are interspersed with related
pictures.

The biggest modification is that the suite of 2nd-floor
temporary exhibition rooms known as the B Galleries has been
commandeered by Christiansen and returned to the permanent
collection.

More Paintings

The changes add about one-third more real estate, allowing
the number of European works from the 13th through the 19th
centuries on view to increase to about 600 from 450.

And when the galleries reopen to the public on May 23,
about 20 loans, including works by Botticelli, Cranach, van
Eyck, Magnasco, Poussin and Rubens, will enhance the Met’s
holdings.

Christiansen has been dreaming of this for years. After the
Met’s Greek and Roman Galleries reopened in 2007, he sent an e-mail to then-director Philippe de Montebello: “Spectacular! When
is it our turn?”

The renovation is a bold, sweeping move that will limit the
scope and number of temporary blockbuster shows the Met can
concurrently mount. When I expressed my concern, Christiansen
said, “We’ve come to the conclusion that we mount so many
important shows that we are in competition only with ourselves.”
He added that it’s high time the Met put its European paintings
collection first.

The overall effect is familiar yet new. When De Montebello
visited, he told Christiansen: “I didn’t know where I was -- the
Prado? The Hermitage? Bravo!”

The biggest surprise was no gift shop. That last B gallery,
perhaps now one of the most beautiful rooms in New York, holds
all of the Met’s Vermeers.

The renovated and expanded European Paintings Galleries
open May 23 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave.
Information: +1-212-535-7710; http://www.metmuseum.org.

(Lance Esplund is U.S. art critic for Muse, the arts and
leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are
his own.)

Muse highlights include Rich Jaroslovsky on Gadgets and
Jason Harper on cars.